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Creating a Powerful Road Safety Campaign

There are over 10,000 serious injuries from car accidents in Canada every year - never has it been more important to educate the country a...

There are over 10,000 serious injuries from car accidents in Canada every year - never has it been more important to educate the country about road safety. Creating a successful campaign is a delicate task. Too graphic and consumers will turn away. Not striking enough and it won’t capture the attention of the target audience. It has to be a fine balance between strength and imagery. Let’s have a look at some previous campaigns that have been successful.

The Stay Alive Campaign
The Quebec Automobile Insurance Company campaign “Buckle Up Stay Alive” from 2012 was such a simple concept, but a very important one in terms of message. Created by agency LG2 it featured a striking image of a t-shirt depicting the years that a person between. The seatbelt covered up the year of death. A great way to deliver the idea that if you buckle up, you won’t die. Research from the insurance company showed that people were less likely to wear a seatbelt between 2 am and 3.30 am. The print ads were placed at restobar hangouts all over the country as a reminder to younger drivers to not take the risk. The campaign was proof that you don’t need a big budget in order to deliver an effective message to people - it cost around $180,000.

Volkswagen Texting at the Wheel
VW have been targeting drivers who use their cell phones whilst driving. Their advertising campaign has cleverly used the phones themselves to show exactly how distracting a text message could be. Cinemagoers found their phones had been hijacked during a scene where a car was driving through a forest, in the middle of a movie. They all received a simple text message. By the time they looked back up from the text, the car on screen had crashed. They are simply emphasising how quickly a text message can distract you - and how much damage it can cause. You can watch the video on YouTube. The VW campaign included the striking image of an emoji that had been in an accident - extremely resonant with the younger generation.

Now You See It Now You Don’t
Fiat, together with advertising agency Leo Burnett Tailor Made came up with an extremely striking campaign warning drivers of the dangers of drink driving. The first image is of a cyclist riding along, printed on the top of a beer can. Yet in the second image, the ring pull on the can is gone, and also the image of the cyclist, when the can opening was. It isn’t gory, or offensive. It doesn’t have to be shown after the watershed. It’s just an extremely effective way of demonstrating what the dangers of drink driving can be.

Creating a powerful road safety campaign doesn’t have to be about shock value. Some of the best ones have show us simply how things that we do every day, bad driving habits, can affect the lives of so many people.